Shymbulak snow report
Central Asia's largest ski area, and still only about 20 km12 mi of piste on eight lifts, mostly intermediate. It opens in stages, a partial late-November start ahead of the full December opening. Off-piste is fenced and signed, and the boundary is enforced: skiers who crossed it in March 2025 triggered a slide that closed two lifts.
Kazakhstan · Asia · live from the weather model at 2260–3200 m7415–10499 ft
Imperial when your device is on a US time zone, metric otherwise, until you choose.
Conditions right now
Read at summit elevation the moment you opened this page.
Hourly windows, accumulation ranges, confidence and travel flags, or the transparent 0–100 Ski Meter score.
Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), adapted for display. Elevations are approximate published figures; forecasts are model estimates, not guarantees.
The mountain right now
The live freezing level drawn on the elevation profile. Above the snow line, precipitation falls and stays as snow.
Terrain shape is schematic; elevations are the resort's approximate published figures.
Ten seasons of snow at Shymbulak
Daily snow depth at this destination's model grid cell, read as ten complete seasons to 31 August 2026. Natural snow only.
In every one of the ten seasons the depth at this cell reached 30 cm12 in and held it for at least a fortnight. The dates above are the median of those ten. The earliest was 16 Oct in 2018-19, the latest 6 Dec in 2025-26.
The band spans the shallowest and the deepest of the ten seasons on each day, and the line runs through the median. It reaches 173 cm68 in, the deepest single day in the record. The dashed line is the 30 cm12 in threshold, and the shaded column is the week Shymbulak traditionally opens, 21 to 27 November.
The index asks a different question of the same ten seasons: in the week this mountain traditionally opens, had 30 cm12 in arrived? All 53 destinations are scored side by side, on one rule.
How the start date is found. For each season this takes the longest unbroken run of days at 30 cm (12 in) or more, and counts it only when that run lasted at least 14 days, because a week of early snow that melts out is not a season starting.
What the model cell is. The reanalysis gives this destination one grid square of roughly 9 km5.6 mi and one elevation for it, being the average of all the terrain inside it. Here that is 3222 m10571 ft, against a resort base of 2260 m7415 ft and a summit of 3200 m10499 ft. Compare the cell against those two before you read any number here as a verdict on the mountain. A reanalysis is a model, not a measurement: it can be too smooth over complex terrain, and it can miss a local storm.
Natural snow only. The model knows about weather. It does not know about snow cannons, and no snowmaking is modelled anywhere. The opening week is traditional, not contractual: it is the window this mountain has historically opened in, not a promise. Daily values run to 31 August 2026.
Take the data. Both tables are free to use and free to republish under CC BY 4.0: one row per destination, and one row per destination per season. Both are in centimetres and metres, whichever units this page shows.
Why it snows here
The Zailiysky Alatau is the northernmost outlier of the Tien Shan, rising straight off the Kazakh steppe in one of the most oceanically remote places on Earth. The air is cold and dry, and winter carries only 30 to 35% of the annual precipitation. What saves it is the altitude gradient: totals climb to around 1,200 mm47 in a year near 2,500 m8,202 ft, which is where the resort begins.
Reading Shymbulak like a forecaster
The number that matters most at Shymbulak is the difference between the base (2260 m7415 ft) and the summit (3200 m10499 ft): when the freezing level sits between the two, the mountain is split into rain or wet snow below and dry snow above. The Ski Meter reads the model at both elevations and scores the day with every point accounted for; the full report adds hourly timing, accumulation ranges and confidence tags so you can decide when to travel, not just whether.